Articles by Simon Gathercole

I had the pleasure of hearing much of the present book in its oral form as the Hulsean Lectures in Cambridge, which Professor Hays delivered in 2013-2014. Striking in both the lectures and now in the book is the boldness, within the current academic climate, with which Hays contends that the Old Testament is to be read as testimony to Christ. Illustrative of this is the quotation of John 5.46 on the front cover: 'If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.' This work, numbering only 109 pages of argument and a couple of dozen pages of endnotes, is offered as a promissory note of a larger volume expanding on the subject. continue

Let me begin by stating the fact that most obviously strikes the recipient of a copy of Paul and the Faithfulness of God (henceforth, PFG): it is 1658 pages long. At one point, probably about a third of the way or half-way through, I had a feeling which - unprompted - interpreted itself in words similar to those of John Newton's Amazing Grace: 'When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun | We've no less days to sing God's praise, as when we first begun'. I felt at this stage at the book that, having read hundreds and hundreds of pages, I still had as many to go as I did when I first begun. One of the chapters is over 250 pages. But I did make it all the way through to what I assume was the George Herbert allusion at the end. continue

We exist to call the Church, amidst a dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship, and life.